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Mototola X Phone Won't "Wow" Consumers, Says Google CFO

Steven Blum2013-03-01T14:02:03ZMar 1, 2013

Steven Blum
Steven Blum has written more than 2,000 blog posts as a founding member of AndroidPIT's English editorial team. A graduate of the University of Washington, Steven Blum also studied Journalism at George Washington University in Washington D.C. for two years. Since then, his writing has appeared in The Stranger, The Seattle P-I, Blackbook Magazine and Venture Villlage. He loves the HTC One and hopes the company behind it still exists in a few years.

There's been so much hype surrounding the upcoming release of the Motorola X Phone that it can be hard to separate fact from fiction. Recent reports, which AndroidPIT wrote about, indicated that the phone would have a brand-new Sony sensor, Kevlar backing, long-lasting battery and other stand-out features.

Expectations are high for the new phone, but yesterday Google CFO and Senior Vice President Patrick Pichette sought to quell the hype with some very frank words. Speaking at a Morgan Stanley Technology Conference, Pichette said that the products currently in Motorola's pipeline are "not really to the standards that what Google would say is wow – innovative, transformative."

Pichette said, "We've inherited 18 months of pipelines that we actually have to drain right now, while we're actually building the next wave of innovation and product lines." If that isn't the undersell of the century, I don't know what is. "We have to go through this transition," he continued. " These are not easy transitions."

Pichette seems to confirm what many had a hunch about: that Motorola has not been Google-fied yet. There was a New York Times article about Motorola's corporate makeover, but it appears the changes instigated by Google have not yet been put into practice. This makes sense, since R&D typically occurs over a year before the release of a new product. It'll be a while before we see a completely integrated Google-Motorola partnership.

That said, it could be that Pichette is just trying to lower expectations even though the next Motorola device will be a stand-out. A long lasting battery, stock Android and other features could be enough to push the phone to the top of the heap. Another Google executive, SVP Vic Gundotra, said that the next Nexus phone would have an "insanely great" camera. Was he not talking about the Motorola X phone? We'll have to see which Google executive ends up being right.

Comments

"We've inherited 18 months of pipelines that we actually have to drain right now"

From everything I've read they've been draining talent as well. With the current course the market seems to have set, in another year or two, Samsung may have Android's market on complete lock down and there's simply no way that tablet variations based on Windows don't wind up with a stranglehold in that market (some of the convertible laptops are simply amazing and bound to catch on). Tearing Moto down for a complete rebuild may wind up being recorded as one of the biggest corporate blunders ever.